Sunk in Sleep

Bianca: You. Adrift for days on these oceans, waiting for help, waiting for the sight of a mast or a flag or a tree or a sail or even a cheap petticoat strung up on a pole - some sort of scarecrow offering to the wheeling gulls and endless waves. What are we doing here? Of course there is a story. One small story after the next. Going, going, going gone. Woke up again. Ate breakfast again. Called mom again. Drifted on this ocean again. Past the horizon, past the edge of the world. Land sheared into crashing water - sounds of water smacking stone, the ceaseless soundtrack of this rugged, ragged shoreline. Wind as well - varied in its listing rhythm like the snores of a sleeping lover. Lighthouse - to warn the incoming ships that shore is nearby. To keep the ships from running aground in the black night. To call the ships to land, to bring them back to home. I look out at the ocean, and of course I am small, I am lonely, I am drifting and no amount of love will bring me into harbor or return me to home. Home was a ship at sea to begin with - drifting without an anchor, no land in sight.

Bianca: If my mouth cannot move, I cannot ask you to save me. I say it in my brain, a thousand times and hard, over and over again. Wake up. I am pounding the words against my skull. I will my lips to purse, my tongue to lick and my throat to swallow. Nothing happens. I am waiting for my body to grab hold of the world and overthrow it. Wake up already. Don't panic, don't make it worse. I want to walk out of this and make breakfast. Have coffee. Light conversation and some news radio. Instead I am stuck here screaming on the inside, heavy on the outside. You don't even know it. You are starting to stir right beside my sweat and shakes, cozy with the cat. I can feel that my mouth is hanging open and that I am drooling. I try to raise my lower jaw and it feels like my eyes are going to burst out of their sockets from the effort. This tyrannical stillness is worse than all the thoughts coming in and out of frame throughout the night. My arms ache. I want to hit you with them so you will hit me back (you always hit harder) and get me out of this. I know what it sounds like when I scream. I try and remind you. You shift, steal some blanket and the cat winks her left eye.

Bianca: Hey, Hello Hey, Who are you I know, I know I know ooo It's hard to be you But when the night is over the sun shines through But hey, it's hard And all the world can see you You try, oh you try Until, ooo you die As long as they take to find him You wait through the night and all along they write their song but all they want is gone and I'll be here, far or near waiting for a sign

Bianca: Sunk in Sleep is a down the rabbit hole kind of exploit. Part daydream, part nightmare, this is the liminal space between dreaming and waking — where meaning goes soft at the edges and anything can walk through the door. We live there every night and remember almost none of it. Sunk in Sleep remembers for you. Rock concert, trance, and tea party walk into the same room. Nobody blinks. Alice in Wonderland-inspired sets make the surreal feel inevitable. The piece vacillates between storyline and kinetic eruption the way a dream does — without apology, without warning.

Ben: Pure and sexy, like a slug. Biological. They're not humans, just creatures